On October 14, polls will open in a national election for a country mired in a foreign war, spiraling into a financial crisis and sinking under a culture war between the conservative everyman and the liberal elite. Sound familiar?
No, this is not a parallel United States that simply has its clocks set ahead a few weeks. This is Canada, and its Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, called in September for the dissolution of his Conservative party’s minority government, resulting in the third national election Canada has held in the past five years.
Rumour circulated in August as Harper debated whether Parliament needed to have an election in order to improve the efficiency of the government. There was even speculation that Harper actually had the election bumped up ahead of schedule so as not to coincide with the attention-grabbing American election, citing Barack Obama as a possible negative influence on the result of his own party’s campaign.
Harper has been compared negatively with President Bush by many of his critics, including his mismanagement of the economy, the environment and the war in Afghanistan. New Democratic Party leader Jack Layton quipped in the French language debate that, following the end of Bush’s presidency, Harper would be “the last leader of a developed country to follow the Bush doctrine.”
Elements of the Canadian election strike eerily similar chords with the U.S. election. All candidates of the five Canadian and two American political parties have shifted the focus of their debates to the economy, which makes sense considering the Toronto Stock Exchange plunged 841 points on the same day the New York Stock Exchange dropped 777 points. Harper has even been quoted recently to have said, ”Remember, Canada is not the United States. The fundamentals of the Canadian economy are sound.”
Alternative energy sources, in light of both countries’ dependence on foreign oil and complicated involvement in foreign wars, and tax incentives to encourage green practices are also hotly debated topics amongst the Green, New Democratic and Liberal parties. Both countries’ liberal parties clamor for concrete, timely exit strategies for their own embroilments in the Middle East, while conservative parties continue to defend their choices and promise to stay the course.
Image also continues to be more of a talking point than issue-related points. Liberal party leader Stephane Dion is apparently as “other” as Obama because he can’t speak English very well, and Green party leader Elizabeth May is apparently as whiny (read “female”) as Hilary Clinton or Sarah Palin because she insisted her party be included in Canada’s general televised debates.
So why should you care? Canada’s going to elect representatives who will elect a Prime Minister you either won’t have heard of or won’t care to hear about. However, considering the interconnectedness of these two countries, in terms of finances, ideologies and, let’s face it, geography, the results of one election might very well have an impact on the results of the other.
Canada may be strangely nondescript to you, but it is going through very similar things, and if its uncannily familiar political circus is any indication of political zeitgeist, come November, we may already know the States’ election results.
My personal inspiration from up north: many Members of Parliament are calling for their citizens to vote ABC–Anyone But Conservatives.
MissaA • Oct 9, 2008 at 4:56 pm
Both countries’ dependence on foreign oil? Most of the foreign oil that the USA depends on is from Canada.
When the Conservatives and New Democrats wanted to exclude May from the debates, there was a public outcry, not a labeling of her as whiny. Playing up Dion’s English skills isn’t “other”-ing him, it’s just making fun of him, as though he’s weak. Trying to “other” Dion would result in the “other”-ing of an entire province where the Conservatives want to pick up seats.
You’re kind of oversimplifying things so as to find similarities that aren’t necissarily there.